There's something ironic about the anonymity afforded by the Internet putting a self-proclaimed member of the hacker group Anonymous in the position of negotiating extortion demands with a law enforcement officer posing as a Symantec employee.
Yet that's the scene being presented publicly this morning by Symantec as word spreads that Anonymous has posted what it says is Symantec source code - as well as a transcript of that ransom negotiation -- after the parties failed to reach an agreement on terms.
Here's a statement Symantec has provided reporters:
In January an individual claiming to be part of the 'Anonymous' group attempted to extort a payment from Symantec in exchange for not publicly posting stolen Symantec source code they claimed to have in their possession. Symantec conducted an internal investigation into this incident and also contacted law enforcement given the attempted extortion and apparent theft of intellectual property. The communications with the person(s) attempting to extort the payment from Symantec were part of the law enforcement investigation. Given that the investigation is still ongoing, we are not going to disclose the law enforcement agencies involved and have no additional information to provide.
The e-mail string posted by Anonymous was actually between them and a fake e-mail address set up by law enforcement. Anonymous actually reached out to us, first, saying that if we provided them with money, they would not post any more source code. At that point, given that it was a clear cut case of extortion, we contacted law enforcement and turned the investigation over to them. All subsequent communications were actually between Anonymous and law enforcement agents - not Symantec. This was all part of their investigative techniques for these types of incidents.
Not that I've spent much time trying to think like one of today's intellectual-property extortionists, but I would have to believe a reasonably intelligent one would presume that the person on the other end of such an email exchange is likely to be a member of law enforcement. And I would imagine that it is this supposition that allows Symantec to so freely confirm the fact to inquiring journalists, even though an investigation is ongoing.
Nevertheless, the first thought I had after reading the story was about what is likely the most famous cartoon about the Internet (above). So with a hat-tip to cartoonist Peter Steiner, I tailored it a bit to fit the story at hand.
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